Gauthier: A toast to hope in the new year

Monday

Dec 31, 2007 at 12:01 AMDec 31, 2007 at 2:03 AM

What are you doing tonight? Will you be in Times Square waiting for the ball to drop? Not me. It's too far to go for one night of revelry, hours spent shivering in the cold while a $400 per night Manhattan hotel room goes unused.

Deborah E. Gauthier/Daily News columnist

What are you doing tonight? Will you be in Times Square waiting for the ball to drop? Not me. It's too far to go for one night of revelry, hours spent shivering in the cold while a $400 per night Manhattan hotel room goes unused.

Will you attend First Night in Framingham, or Boston, or Worcester, or Providence? Not me. Activities that involve walking from one event to another when it's cold, wet, and icy just aren't, in my opinion, the recipe for a good time.

Have you and your closest friends planned an evening at a nightspot featuring a famous or used-to-be famous band? Not me. All that noise. All that alcohol-induced enthusiasm for the coming year makes me cringe.

Are you going to a house party? Not me. My friends and family don't have house parties any more, not very often anyway, and never on New Year's Eve.

There was a time when I looked forward to the new year, made a point to spend the last hours of the year's passing with lots of people, many of whom I didn't know, made New Year's resolutions with an honest intent to keep them, and believed something really changed with the first, fresh page of a calendar.

But something happens to a person in their run around the block year after year after year. We get old, and with that comes what could be called cynicism. I don't think it is, though sometimes it feels like cynicism's close cousin.

What creeps up on us as we age is maturity, something that is absolutely necessary if one is to survive the bumps and bruises that come with life. So one day we wake up and realize we'd rather be home on New Year's Eve than anywhere else.

Fifty-somethings like me struggle, juggling jobs, homes, family and other personal responsibilities, knowing they are blessings. Where would we be without the things that make our life difficult and worthwhile all at the same time? Nowhere comfortable, and that's a fact.

It's also a fact that nothing changes simply because of the tick of a clock. When the sun rises on Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2008, the problems each of us have on Monday, Dec. 31, 2007, will remain. So why do people around the world put so much emphasis on the last day, last minutes of the year?

Some are grateful, I think, that they made it through another year despite the hurdles they jumped to get here. Celebration is good for the psyche.

Others are hopeful that the coming year won't be as difficult as the one just past. Hope is a necessary ingredient to a good life.

Others, I've noticed, spend the last day of the year in a frantic search for something, not knowing what that something is.

Maybe they're searching for the comfort that comes with the knowledge that they can, from one year to the next, handle whatever life throws their way.

Face it. Life isn't easy. Solve one problem and another emerges, kind of like that silly game where you whack a mole with a mallet, shoving its head back into the hole, only to have another pop up somewhere else.

Whacking those moles sure beats the alternative.

So my husband and I will spend tonight in our warm home, grateful we're together, grateful for our family, our home, our friends and our jobs. And we'll hoist a glass of spiked egg nog to hope that everyone, everywhere is able to keep whacking those moles.

That toast may not come at midnight, however. This aging body likes to be in bed by 10, even on the most celebrated night of the year.

Deb Gauthier can be reached by e-mail at dgauthie@cnc.com.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.